Monday, December 17, 2018

The Ancestry Map of America


The American Ancestry map shows the most populous ancestry, Hispanic or racial group in each census tract in the U.S. according to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, 2013-17. The map uses different colors to show you the ancestry, Hispanic or racial group (AHR) which most residents self-identify with in every census tract in the country.

In the screenshot above that pink color in the Midwest indicates German and the green color in New England shows a large proportion of the population have English ancestry. The orange color along the Mexican border shows, you guessed it, a large number of people with Mexican ancestry. If you zoom in on individual cities you can find more localized patterns of ancestry. For example in New York City you will find that Italian is the top AHR in lots of the city's suburbs. If you switch coasts and zoom in on Greater Los Angeles you will see that here many census tracts have Mexican as the most populous AHR.

If you hover over a census tract on the map you can view the actual percentage of the population who identify as the top ancestry, Hispanic or racial group in the selected tract and the percentages of the next five largest AHR groups.

You can also use the map's 'Layer' control to select individual AHR groups on the map. For example if you select 'A-Fi' and then 'Cuban' you can view all the census groups where people have Cuban ancestry. If you hover over any of the colored census tract areas you can view the percentage of the population with Cuban ancestry.

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